This hands-on workshop introduces participants to the concept of cognitive warfare and explores the increasingly blurred boundaries between technology, information, infrastructure and human perception. Working in teams, participants will develop fictional scenarios that examine how biological, auditory, visual and information-based technologies could become mechanisms of psychological influence and control.

After a short introduction to cognitive warfare, each team will receive a speculative brief and be invited to define a context, a fictional target group and the psychological effect their scenario seeks to investigate. From there, participants will map how systems embedded within contemporary life — from digital platforms and communication networks to urban and technological infrastructures — might interact with human perception and behaviour.

Throughout the workshop, these scenarios will gradually be developed into speculative systems. Participants will map their mechanisms, consider how different technologies might intersect, and design the interfaces, objects or visual languages through which these imagined systems could operate. Through sketches, diagrams, prototypes and other proof-of-concept materials, each group will give physical or visual form to its scenario.

The workshop culminates in a collective simulation in which the speculative projects are presented, examined and challenged by the group. Rather than proposing functional technologies, the resulting artefacts operate as tools for critical reflection, making otherwise invisible systems of influence tangible and open to discussion.

A final debrief connects the fictional scenarios developed during the workshop to contemporary questions surrounding AI, media power, technological infrastructures, persuasion, misinformation and public manipulation. By temporarily stepping into the position of those designing systems of influence, participants are invited to examine their mechanisms critically and question where speculation ends and existing technological realities begin.